The team that failed to win MP Eve Adams the Conservative party nomination in the new riding of Oakville North-Burlington has identified a new preferred candidate for the spot: her fiancé Dimitri Soudas.

Conservative organizer Stephen Sparling, who led Adams scandal-plagued bid for the riding, confirmed Monday he was actively trying to recruit Mr. Soudas for the role.

“There’s a number of people that worked closely with Eve, including myself, that were very, very impressed with Dimitri through that process and have heavily encouraged him to step forward as the best potential candidate for us in the riding, and I’m chairing those exploratory discussions,” Mr. Sparling said.

“We’re very, very hopeful that we can convince Dimitri [to run] and all our supporters to support him.”

It’s a move that could rekindle a nasty internal party feud. Mr. Soudas was heavily implicated in what became a disastrous nomination fight for the Conservatives in Oakville last year.

Both Ms. Adams and her lone opponent at the time, local chiropractor

Natalia Lishchyna, dropped out of the race after an internal party investigation into their shenanigans.

Ms. Lischyna’s organizers had accused Ms. Adams team of vastly overspending their nomination limit, and of paying the entrance fees for new party members, which is against Conservative Party rules.

Ms. Soudas, meanwhile, lost his job as Executive Director of the Conservative Party after he allegedly interfered in the nomination process, in direct contravention of his employment contract.

But Mr. Sparling said he isn’t concerned about any of that. “I don’t know that anybody that we would propose would be acceptable to those that were aggressively against us in the past, so I really can’t care about those people,” he said.

Reached by email, Mr. Soudas ignored questions about the nomination. “Focused on being Manager Partner of Stampede Group and Chief Operating Officer of the International Economic Forum of the Americas/Toronto Global Forum,” he said in a terse statement.”

Asked if that meant he was uninterested in the nomination, he didn’t respond.

The Conservative Party has yet to reschedule the nomination contest for Oakville North-Burlington, a new riding created ahead of the 2015 election. Only one candidate, long time local insider Effie Triantafilopoulos, has declared for the new race.

Ms. Adams, currently the MP for Mississauga-Brampton South, bought a house with Mr. Soudas in the new riding in 2013. Last year, she caused a stir with the local Conservative board when she dropped in unannounced at one of their meetings.

According to a letter the local party president wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Ms. Adams refused to leave when asked, bullied members of the board and demanded to know how much money the president had donated to the party.

Mr. Soudas was said to have been heavily involved in Ms. Adams’ campaign, both before and after leaving his job with the party. But Mr. Sparling said any negativity in the new race would not come from the Draft Dimitri team.

“It’s our hope to do everything in a positive, harmonious way,” he said. “And if there’s others that have a problem with that, then they can put up their candidate.”